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Mutual Aid/Best Practices vs Local Practices

_jzhao

This image reminds me of how mutual aid and communities keep each other fed, and safe, and how local practices are actually best practices. My own research, although not immediatley related to the specific public health concern of COVID, will focus on Indigenous food soverignty, particularly the right and autonomy to ferment and distribute alcohol (紅糯米酒) within the Amis community, and their current fight with the local health department on declaring whether or not their alcohol is "safe" for public consumption and distribution.

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michael.lee

A professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard University, Dr. Byron Good, Ph.D. is an anthropologist who has conducted research on mental illness and the society's perspective on various mental illnesses. He has authored and published numerous research articles, publications, and books on his areas of research. 

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michael.lee

"Moreover, in any mumber of disasters over the past two centuries, the 'disaster investigation,' far from proving itself the dispassionate, scientific verdict on causality and blame, actually emerges as a hard-fought contest to define the moment in politics and society, in technology and culture."

"And, no investigation he could provide would change the fact that most Americans viewed the burning of the Capitol in 1814 as a diplomatic and military, not an engineering, disaster."

"Certainly the move to NIST places a great premium on the power of "investigation" as not only a technical, but also a moral tool, a sacred act, assigning a higher meaning to the tests and calculations that must ultimately assign causes and fix blame--but this is nothing new in American history. While the investigator's tools may have sharpened since Latrobe's study of the Capitol, the Hague Street inquest, or the Iroquois Fire, disaster investigation still pits expert against expert, the demand for patient study against the will to rebuild and forget."

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michael.lee

This policy was, in part, designed to prevent "patient dumping" whereby hospitals would refuse to treat certain patients due to inability to pay for treatment and either refuse admittance or transfer them to other hospitals. Furthermore, it specifically addresses female patients in active labor, requiring that hospitals ensure that these patients are also treated and stabilized in the emergency department or receiving facility.

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michael.lee
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Natural disasters are the first type of disaster that comes to mind when assessing FEMA's response efforts, but the organization is also concerned with response to acts of terrorism, acts of war by a foreign nation, and other manmade disasters. That being said, FEMA was heavily criticized for its response during and after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.